What is the purpose of the criminal justice system?

[sketerpot]

Is the purpose of our criminal justice system purely to deter crimes? Is it meant to make law-abiding citizens feel better by exacting vengeance on people who have done bad things? Is it to humanely rehabilitate as many ciminals as possible while detaining the rest?

Whenever a story about some horrible atrocity comes up, people are yelling for blood: they propose various horrible, poetically fitting ends for the criminals involved and seem to actually think the justice system should do things like fgalkin described a while back:

The first one should be hung from a tree by a rope attached to his legs. His head shouild be between his legs in his groin, with his cut-off genitalia stuffed in his mouth. To make this possible, his spine shouild be broken.

The second one should be beaten, his eyes out out with a hot stick,and the same white-hot stick then should be applied to various areas of his body, and then be driven up his anus. Then, he should be hung from that very tree by his own intestines.

While not everybody advocates this sort of thing as general policy, most people get grim pleasure from knowing that sick fuckers are going to jail for a long time. Does this cloud our judgement? This sort of thing comes up when people are talking about the rights of the accused versus the rights of the victims for "closure" (which seems to be a code word for "revenge"), and nobody seems to be sure whether we put criminals in jail for rehabilitiation, deterrence, or revenge (or some combination of the three). Which is it, and how should it be?

If your vision of how it should be differs from how it is, what policies do you think should be changed? (No more torture wanking, please---if your policies involve individually devised torture, just say so and leave it at that lest the me-too replies grow out of control.)

[The Guid]

Is the purpose of our criminal justice system purely to deter crimes? Is it meant to make law-abiding citizens feel better by exacting vengeance on people who have done bad things? Is it to humanely rehabilitate as many ciminals as possible while detaining the rest?

In my opinin, the first and last. We need a deterrent to prevent people doing crime. We also need rehabilitation to stop people doing it again. We don't need vengeance, we need justice.

[Vendetta]

There are multiple goals to the justice and prison system.

Primarily though, it's about deterring crime, compensating the victims of crime, and removing from society those who have shown themselves unable or unwilling to follow the agreed set of social rules until such time as they are able to take part in society again.

[Darth Wong]

The criminal justice system has three purposes:

1. To deter crime, by setting up a system of penalties for committing it.
2. To rehabilitate criminals so that they can become useful members of society rather than the worthless dregs that they are now.
3. To generate a sense of confidence among the general population that their society is reasonably safe and that it values law-abiding citizens much more than it values criminals.

Vengeance may very well be a legitimate action in light of the third purpose. And the third purpose should not be taken lightly; if people are not convinced that their society is safe, fear will cause many of the social structures to break down. Lawlessness is often the result, as seen in certain historical cases.

[Sean Howard]

I think it developed as a way of legitimizing vengeance that would otherwise be carried out by individuals or mob actions.

Society is saying, look we know you want to beat up this guy that stole your shoes, but lets do it in a fair and organized way.

[Master of Ossus]

The criminal justice system has any number of purposes, but its primary objective is to preserve society by ensuring that wrongdoers are given punishments in-line with their misdeeds. Any rehabilitation is a bonus. Deterrance is nice but not strictly necessary.

[Netko]

All of the mentioned ones, however diffrent countries have diffrent implementation where the objectives are given diffrent priorities.

For example, most european contries go for rehabilitation first, deterance second and vengance a distant (and often thought of with disgust) third. The US on the other hand, IMO, goes for deterance first, vengance second and rehabilitation third, while for example Saudi Arabia would go for vengance first, deterance second and with rehabilitation probably not even being recognised officialy as a objective of the justice system.